This paper was written by R. Morel and George Fleck and published in 2006. It applies the maximum entropy production principle to chemistry. The abstract states: “Classical thermodynamics, based on conservation of matter and energy and on the increase of entropy accompanying every natural event, reliably predicts equilibrium properties of macroscopic systems, regardless of the complexity of those systems. Thermodynamic theory historically has had little to say about the far-from-equilibrium evolution of systems. This is in part because the classical laws of thermodynamics, limited to requirements about the degree and direction of change, are silent about the means and pathways for achieving change. We propose a simply stated yet powerful Fourth Law of Thermodynamics that significantly extends the domain of thermodynamics by incorporating evolving systems and thereby adding richness to thermodynamic description. Chemistry embraces two contrasting and complementary theoretical frame-works the microscopic and the macroscopic. Microscopic chemical theory is an attempt to understand chemical systems in terms of their minute constituents, often by applying quantum theory to the ensembles of nuclei and electrons that comprise individual molecules. Mass-action kinetics describes the evolution of chemically reacting systems in terms of molecular mechanisms; kinetics provides descriptions of chemical change in terms of microscopic reaction models. By contrast, macroscopic chemical theory is a parallel attempt to understand chemical systems in terms of such principles as the laws of thermodynamics. Thermodynamic descriptions sparse, parsimonious and explicitly independent of mechanistic explanations make general claims about complex systems without requiring detailed analysis of often unavailable or even unknowable microscopic details.”
Fleck, G., Morel, R., “A Fourth Law of Thermodynamics”, Chemistry 15/4 (2006): 305-310